There are both stark and Starck reminders, of very different times, at this one-off West Cork home on the verdant banks of the Argideen River.

Believing attendance at an Irish food festival is a state of grace any God-fearing Gael should aspire to on a near daily basis.

MUCH has changed on the Irish food scene since I started the Ballymaloe Cookery School in September 1983.

FABIO O’BRIEN hit a hat-trick as confident Monaghan United turned on the class to brush aside the challenge of Munster Senior League side Everton at Gortakeegan.

CORK South West election candidate John Kearney is determined to leave no ground uncovered in his quest to try and break down the bureaucracy “that prevents so many people from putting business ideas into action”.

I’M SITTING with my back to a stone wall on Inis Meáin — on Ireland’s western seaboard — watching islander Padraic McDonagh hand threshing rye in the time honoured way.

THE outside might look like a conventional, albeit upmarket dormer bungalow — but the delight is in the detail. Built for his own ends by craftsman joiner John Desmond, Ballady Lodge, on its acre site, near Belgooly, in Co Cork, is a place where you can see the woods, and the trees.

CARMEL SOMERS, owner of the iconic Good Things café in Durrus developed her love and appreciation of good food in her childhood “while surrounded by lavish roast dinners, meticulous baking and too much butter”.

THIS looks the easiest of the 10 Cork County Council electoral areas to predict, especially as it’s only a three-seater – and the three outgoing councillors are firm favourites to be returned.

CORK secondary school teacher John Desmond yesterday became a fully fledged Garda Reserve member when he joined 100 other reservists who graduated at Templemore College.

ONE of Ireland’s most southerly communities has become the Island of Paint and Scholars after the first graduates of an offshore degree programme earned their scrolls yesterday.

A PLAYWRIGHT and journalist will have a captive audience when his new play is staged in a prison.

A YOUNG woman who scored the highest mark in this year’s Leaving Cert physics exam urged students yesterday to embrace science.

David Clerkin

ISLANDERS off Cork are planning a sea change in their attitude to the development and promotion of tourism.

WATERFORD UNITED captain John Frost will spend tonight’s FAI Carlsberg Cup second round tie against Everton in a hospital bed rather than at Turner’s Cross as doctors strive to locate a leak in his lung.